Jeff Van Gundy, Stick Rider

You may have thought that you were overly excited for the start of the NBA Finals. But I have to tell you, ABC/ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy was more excited than you could ever thought of being. Not because he was going to be paid to watch and give his opinion on a NBA Finals game. Oh no. That’s boring. He had plans to reveal to a national television audience that he was now part of LeBron James’ public relations team. Or in layman’s terms, he had plans to ride LeBron James’ stick in front of a national television audience.

Now, I could go on and on trying to prove my point, but there’s no need. Jeff Van Gundy, with the help of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, will do that just fine.

“He’s never gotten into any type of scandal, all he decided to do was to go to a different place to work,” Van Gundy said. “And it just shows you that we celebrate athletes who go through addictions, go through problems with the law. This isn’t what LeBron James has had problems with. He made a questionable decision, at best, to have the decision and then I think the Miami Heat organization did themselves a disservice by having that over-the-top celebration.”

And Van Gundy didn’t stop there. Minutes later after Shawn Marion was sent to the free-throw line with just under five minutes left before halftime, Van Gundy re-directed the conversation back to the LeBron James discussion.

“And just going back to James’ decision, the other part is, wouldn’t every working American want to chose where they want to work and who they work with if they could,” Van Gundy questioned. “And so we resent the thing that we would want in our own profession.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just do us all a favor, Jeff Van Gundy. Get off LeBron James’ stick.